Our Love, In Reverse
by K. Constantine
Summary: A journey through love, mistakes, and the moments lived in between.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Bones. No infringement intended.  
**A/N **: This story is a sincere thank you to everyone who reviewed and/or added Blind Situation to their favorite/alert list. A very special thank you goes out to xcitedutterance who donated money to charity to get me to write more Bones fic. I'm sorry it took so long.  
**Feedback**: I am terrible at updating, but if you let me know you want more, I'll definitely finish this story. Plus, I've never tried anything like this before, so I'd love to hear what you think.

**25.**

"Don't make this harder than it has to be." Cam says as she closes the car door, securing Rosalind in the backseat.

I fear those being the final words we share. Last parceled out between the ragged zip of her suitcase, and now clashing with the slam of her car door. That fear drills millions of tiny foramina from my frontal bone to my metatarsals. It vitiates me until the pain is unutterable and inescapable.

When Cam finally drives away from the ruins of our family, the moment renders me still. I remain standing in our driveway, unable to move for certainty of fragmenting the shell of what she left behind. It is within the confines of my own disintegration that I can irrevocably know what philosophers and poets have asserted for centuries.

The heart can indeed break.

**24.**

The walls of Angela's spare bedroom are a peculiar ultramarine; the exact shade of the waters surrounding a small island off the coast of Kenya.

The idea for the trip to the island originated with Angela, spread to Hodgins, and finally greeted me at the bitter end of an exhausting day. It is a day that will not be effortlessly disregarded. A day where we witnessed a child killer go free because, for once, I was not the smartest person in the room.

"I think we should go," Cam said. "Seeley agreed to keep Rosie."

I tiredly opened my eyes, ready to list the abundance of reasons why this was the worst possible time for us to take a vacation.

"I need a break," she continued quietly. I could see the grief exposed in the faint lines creasing her forehead. "I just... really need a break."

Cam rarely admitted needing anything, especially from me. Even during the nascent moments our friendship, she has always accepted what I could give and known it was everything of which I was capable.

So I pushed the reasons away. And within two weeks, we were on an island following Angela through the jungle in her quest to find the exact elements of nature that would create paint the color of the ocean.

Now it is two years later, and I have spent the last six days in this bedroom being tormented by this color.

Angela sits cross-legged at the edge of the bed, and I lean uncomfortably against the headboard. "I've tried harder at this then at anything before in my life, Angela." My admission is the first sound either of us has made in over an hour. "But I don't know how to fix this."

She looks at me sadly, like a friend without answers. "Sweetie, I don't know if you can."

**23.**

The lab is viciously silent. Booth stands at the back, here only because his service to justice demands it. Hodgins has refused to talk to me about anything unrelated to our current case in three days. Angela tries to smile reassuringly, but when Cam finally joins us, her effort is compromised by the unsparing reality of my mistakes.

Cam stops next to Hodgins, and as far away from me as it is possible to be and still retain visual proximity to the remains. Normally, this is where she would say, "Dr. Brennan, what do we have?"

Today, there is only the stifling breath of excuses and broken trust.

"I... I have determined the cause of death to be a cylindrical item with a diameter of half a centimeter. It was systematically thrust through the victim's hyoid with an incredible amount of force, resulting in the bone's complete shattering."

My pronouncement is met by a long, uncomfortable pause where we all look everywhere except at one another.

"Does anyone have anything else to add?" Cam finally asks. Everyone remains silent. "Okay, when you do, I'll be in my office."

Cam leaves as quickly as she arrived. The precise movement of her walking away from me is an agonizingly familiar sight now. It bleeds into my vision like a stereoscopic depiction of the woman I love and the woman I betrayed.

"Call me when you've got something," Booth says when he's halfway out the door. I want to be angry with him for leaving me here to deal with this alone. I want to be angry with him for failing to be the partner and friend I desperately need. I want to go back three days and-

"Is this how it's going to be from now on?" Hodgins asks me directly, pulling my attention away from Booth's quickly retreating back.

"If it is, our effectiveness will be greatly compromised," I respond. I know I have answered his question like a scientist instead of a friend.

"Our effectiveness will be greatly compromised? That's all you have to say?" He shakes his head primarily in anger, but if I were only to dust the surface I believe I would unearth the artifacts of pity.

"Babe––," Angela starts.

"No, Ange, we had a great thing here and now what do we have? Compromised effectiveness?" he sneers. "That's so not gonna cut it."

"Dr. Hodgins, I..." my words dissipate into barren stillness. He waits for me to continue, but I find myself radically depleted. "Dr. Hodgins," I start again, "I do not know how to make this better for you."

We stare at each other with the breadth of my inadequacies stretched between us and nothing else to say.

**22.**

Cam sits on our bed, and I kneel in front of her. My hands rest on her legs. From closed eyes, her tears fall against my fingers.

"Just tell me what to do," I plead. "I swear I––" At that, she opens her eyes. Her stare exposes me, reveals the bitter evidence my mistake.

There are no words to fix this. The sudden realization is brutal and terrifying.

"I know why you did it," she says. "I get it. But I can't-" she stops. "I can't––" she tries again. She takes a deep breath and I feel each molecule of oxygen burn inside my own chest. "Just... don't make this harder than it has to be," she finally whispers.

She does not push me away. She sits on our bed and waits for me to move. Before she loved me, I would have been ill-equipped to interpret the subtleties of her unspoken request. But in this moment I understand what she needs even if it is not enough, and not in time.

Slowly, I turn myself away from her until I am sitting on the floor, my back against the bed. I watch as she walks away, and I do not allow my own tears to fall until I hear the soft click of the bedroom door closing between us.

**21.**

The sun crests the horizon outside Booth's bedroom window and I have yet to go home. I stare at the ceiling not seeing anything at all. His sheets scratch against my naked back. There is heat everywhere our skin touches. The intense warmth, a mixture of love, and guilt, and grief.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. His voice is beaten and hoarse, separated from everything that defines the man I know.

"It's okay," I whisper back.

"I'm so sorry," he repeats, and I understand this apology is not for me.

We lay there in a grave of silence, buried in everything we just lost.

"Bones?"

I lift myself onto my arm and gaze down at him.

"I don't think I can do this," his voice breaks. "I can't believe he's just... not here anymore."

I do not know what to say. I know what I would normally say, but this is Booth, and this is important, so I suppress the instinctual recitation of accurate but suddenly unavailing facts concerning the ostensible mysteries of death.

"You just have to know," I start, and Booth closes his eyes as I speak. "That you were a great dad to him." He breathes in deeply, but not deeply enough to keep him from finally crying. "A great dad," I whisper through my own tears.

He opens his eyes, and I see all of him. He pulls me down into an engulfing kiss, begging me to swallow his suffering.

My attempt is unrelenting. But I am drowning. And the only thing within reach to save me are the jagged shards of an already shattered promise.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I re-edited the first chapter because I thought it needed a little more polish. No need to re-read it, as it doesn't change the story, but I do think it is better.  
**

**20.**

The kitchen is cold, and bright. It vividly contrasts with the black of our funeral attire.

If lies were animate objects capable of physical deception, I am certain there is no place for one to hide here. So when I scratchily say, "I don't think Booth should be alone," I know the truth is raw and exposed, gasping for air.

Cam sits at the table. My back to her, my hands grip the sink. The cups from our morning coffee, stained with residue from perfectly ground beans procured from an isolated Amazonian tribe, stare back at me.

"You're right."

It is all she says. And that is when I become cognizant of another truth.

She has been waiting for my last sentence, for those exact words, from the moment we stumbled from colleagues to friends, from friends to lovers. It was merely the context which needed to be excavated.

"I am just going to make sure he is alright," I continue.

There is a long silence.

And then:

"Okay."

Those four letters break us both.

**19.**

The Jeffersonian is completely empty. Not even the janitorial staff remain.

206 bones are meticulously displayed on my table.

Christopher Stein. Male. Twenty-eight years old. Caucasian. Striations along his acetabulofemoral joint suggest a lifetime spent as a long distance runner.

I study my way down his body until I reach his smallest phalange.

Nothing.

So, I start again.

Christopher Stein. Male. Twenty-eight years old. Caucasian. Striations along his acetabulofemoral joint suggest a lifetime spent as a long distance runner.

I pick up his frontal bone; it feels heavier this time.

"What are you doing?" Cam asks quietly from the doorway. An old pair of NYPD sweatpants and a white t-shirt replace the black pencil skirted suit she left the house with yesterday morning.

"I have missed something." I place the frontal bone back on the table and move onto the supraorbital process. "I just need to––"

"It's three o'clock in the morning," she interrupts. She stands next to me now. I am too exhausted to move away. "Come home."

"Christopher Stein does not have the ability to go home. It is my responsibility to ascertain why that is."

"How is your responsibility. Why is not." She guides my hands down until the bone joins the rest of Christopher's remains. She turns me around until my back is pressed against the table.

She leans forward, whispers her lips against mine. She does it again. And again. And again. When she finally opens her eyes, they are close enough that I can count the red and irritated conjunctiva, each one causing guilt to swirl in my chest for making her climb out of bed in the middle of the night.

"Come home," she says again. Then more intently, "I love you."

It is an immutable truth. It quiets my fears, smoothes my flaws. And for tonight, it is enough.

**18**.

I rush through the hospital doors, not running, but close.

It takes two minutes for the elevator to arrive from the twenty-third floor to ground level. Another five before I am pushing open Dr. Lowell's office door.

Booth jumps out of his seat as I cross the threshold.

"Bones, tell this guy he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about."

Immediately, I wish to say it would be unwise for me to make such a determination without proper research into Dr. Lowell's credentials. That I would also need to thoroughly investigate all of his patient files. Possibly consult with the foremost physicians in his field.

But I do not.

Booth wants this too badly.

The need is transcribed too clearly along the lines of his face.

"What did he say?" I ask.

"He said..." Booth stops, unable to get the words to process from his brain and into the room. "He said Parker has cancer. Leukemia. He said six months. But he's gotta be wrong, Bones. He's gotta be wrong."

I look back and forth between Dr. Lowell and Booth and it is the first time in my life that I have wished to be someone else entirely. Someone with vast knowledge of human emotion and words of comfort instead of the coldness of logic and truth.

"We should get a second opinion," I say.

"I'm the third," Dr. Lowell offers.

"Leukemia is bone cancer, right? So you can look at Parker's charts and run some tests, and-"

"Booth, I––"

"Please," he says desperately. "You can fix him, Bones. I know you can."

But I cannot.

And neither of us will ever forgive me for it.

**17.**

Cam pulls into the garage. The door slowly slides down behind us, blocking the humid summer air.

I realize I'm drunk as I stumble out of the car, with my feet bare and Cam's favorite red heels hanging from my fingers.

She's halfway to the door by the time I catch up. My heels drop to the floor, and I slip my fingers into the belt loops located on the back of her jeans.

There's something I need to tell her. A reminder.

"I'm tired," she says coming to a stop.

I don't care, so I push myself against her back and walk forward until her body is flush against the door.

"The babysitter––"

"Can wait," I finish.

Before she can conjure anymore excuses, I bite and lick a secret spot at the base of her neck that always makes her say...

"Tempe..."

And then her palms are flat against the door, and I quickly slide my hands underneath her shirt, around her waist, and directly to the front clasp of her bra.

My lips don't leave her neck as her breasts fall heavily into my hands. Her nipples pebble between my fingertips.

Once, when this was all new, and I approached the reactions of her body like a scientific study, I spent exactly thirty-seven minutes alternating attention on her nipples between my tongue and my fingers. When I confessed that I imagined the tiny lines that stood out in stark contrast when her nipples hardened to be my fingerprints, she came on the spot.

The memory makes me surrender patience. I turn her around, unzip her jeans, and plunge my fingers into her without hesitation.

She's wet, hot, clenching.

She slams her head back against the door. She rocks against my fingers, and her ragged breathing throbs relentlessly against my center.

I catch her lips, then her tongue, drunkenly thinking if my brain could only master a single skill, it would be this.

A short, desperate whimper, and I know she's close. I pull my lips away, open my eyes.

I thrust my fingers once, twice, three more times. Her eyes fly open. She comes fluttering a silent gasp against my skin, and I remember what I wanted say.

"I chose you."

**16.**

We sit at our table at our favorite karaoke bar. Even after all these years, I am amazed that I have the caliber of friends which even requires an 'our table."

Hodgins leaves to retrieve another round. Technically we are still working on the last, but I have consumed enough alcohol at this point to allow such details to remain unspoken.

Cam and Angela fervently discuss the merits of the last performance, a man of approximately sixty years old singing about fighting for the privilege of partying.

Ever since Hodgins performed a song from the band Jovi and I concluded that living on a prayer was in fact an unsustainable and absurd way to lead one's life, I have been summarily excluded from these discussions.

"This is for my favorite girl, Bones!" Booth says a bit too loudly into the microphone. Somehow, he has maneuvered around the packed tables and up onto the stage. His tie is loose, and his smile is a little sloppy.

The music starts and I recognize the song instantly. "Day-o! Day-o! Daylight come and me wan' go home!"

He points the microphone to me, and I cannot help but laugh and smile as I sing the next line. "Day! Me say day, me say day, me say day-o!"

Booth takes over again. He continues the song in a terrible Jamaican accent. The crowd loves it. I love it. It is impossible not to.

Abruptly, Cam stands up. "Going to the bathroom," is what she says, but it sounds like a wound as opposed to a destination.

I stand up to follow her, but Booth points the microphone at me again.

It's the last line of the song. And Cam is in the bathroom. And Booth is looking at me with his loose tie and his sloppy smile.

So I sing, "Daylight come and me wan' go home." I finish with a flourish that I only half mean.

Angela leans close so that she can be heard over the cheering crowd. "It never gets easier, does it?"

"What?"

She waits a moment, contemplates finishing her thought.

"Loving two people," she says.

There is a long pause, and I consider lying. But this is Angela, so I don't.

"No, it doesn't," I say quietly.

But sometimes it feels like I'm failing at both, is the answer I keep to myself.

**A/N: Hopefully, the reverse narrative isn't confusing. I would love some feedback on it. Thanks for reading. And I apologize for all the angst.**


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